1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to equipment used for the filling of cartons or cases with bottles and/or cans. The invention is particularly adapted for usage of the packer grid disclosed herein in combination with a control head wherein the control head carries the article to a position above the packer grid for release therethrough. The packer grid then orients the bottles and/or cans into the array of the case positioned therebelow for receiving thereof.
Devices in the prior art have been of many different configurations, however, they have basically been unduly complicated in construction requiring the use of many different members with the result that they are expensive to produce and maintain. Difficulties are also encountered due to the manner in which the articles are fed to the control head with the result that the articles may jam or be displaced. With such rough usage as this type of equipment experiences, damage to the grid is commonplace. With prior art devices any such damage requires disassembly of the entire bottle packing grid station. The present invention has the advantage over those designs since each of the individual grids of the double case packer is individually removable to allow maintenance of the guide members or the channel dividers in a simple and efficient manner.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Prior art devices utilizing this type of design are such as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,325,967 patented June 20, 1967 to A. J. Wild for equipment depositing articles and receptacles. The present invention is an advancement over the design of this above patent since the present invention utilizes individually removable grid sections. In this patent and in many of the designs currently being used, it is necessary to completely disassemble the control head and packer grid station to repair an element thereof. The present design on the other hand, is usable with a variety of different types of control heads and provides an easy manner for replacing elements of a packer grid especially usable with grids utilized for double case packing.